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Brazil’s real advanced amid increasing speculation that an impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff is getting closer as her political allies fall away.

Traders pushed up the value of the Brazilian currency amid reports that the biggest party in Congress may leave the governing coalition as soon as Tuesday. The PMDB’s decision to split with the government may prompt other parties to follow, further reducing the government’s support. The real added 1 percent to 3.6427 per dollar at 9:59 a.m. in Sao Paulo The currency has gained 8.7 percent this year, the most among its most-traded counterparts.

“The prospect of PMDB and other parties splitting with the government is boosting Brazilian assets today,” said Eduardo Longo, who helps manage 23 billion reais as a fixed-income portfolio manager at Quantitas, in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

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When Dilma Rousseff attended the 2016 opening session of Brazil’s congress this week, she appealed to lawmakers to approve tax increases to tackle a widening gap in the country’s public finances.

Most critically, the president called for the reintroduction of a tax on financial transactions, known as the CPMF, that was abandoned in 2007 after objections from business. Opposition congressmen booed her.

But with Brazil reporting a budget deficit last year that was the biggest among emerging economies except for Saudi Arabia at over 10 per cent, unpopular measures are needed to save the country from a deepening fiscal hole, analysts say

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Brazil’s real rose for a second day on speculation President Dilma Rousseff will appoint an economic team that will revive growth and on wagers the U.S. Federal Reserve will avoid an early increase in interest rates.

The currency gained 0.3 percent to 2.5522 per dollar at the close of trade in Sao Paulo after dropping 3.2 percent last week. Swap rates, a gauge of expectations for changes in Brazil’s borrowing costs, fell 0.04 percentage point to 12.61 percent on the contract maturing in January 2017. The real advanced amid optimism that the next finance minister will move away from policies that helped lead Brazil into a recession in the first half of the year. Today’s increase was the biggest among 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg after the South Korean won.

“There has been a lot of expectation that a new economic team will be able to restore growth,” Camila Abdelmalack, an economist at CM Capital Markets in Sao Paulo, said in a telephone interview.

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Brazil’s central bank President Alexandre Tombini didn’t see any shortage of foreign currency in the country’s spot market in the week the real declined to a two-month low.

The nation and other emerging markets face a “sell-off” because of “interest rate normalization” in advanced economies, Tombini said in a speech delivered in Santiago on the evening of Nov. 15 and published on the Central Bank of Brazil’s website yesterday. The world’s second-biggest emerging economy after China is “providing currency hedge for the private sector” with an $100-billion intervention program for 2013, Tombini said.

Brazil’s real has fallen 5 percent since Oct. 31, when the government said its budget deficitwidened to the largest in almost four years on concern about a credit rating downgrade. On Nov. 13, the currency dropped to 2.3341 per dollar, the weakest since Sept. 4.

As the United States holds its breath waiting for the resolution on the shutdown, so does Latin America. The fiscal crisis that began two weeks ago with the closing of the U.S. government and could culminate in a U.S. debt default in a few days could have disastrous consequences for the United States’ southern neighbors, hurting the currency exchange rates and weakening the region’s growth.

The U.S., still Latin America’s largest trade partner and investor, must decide whether it will raise the debt ceiling, currently at $16.7 trillion, or suspend payments to bondholders. If that were to happen, possibly as soon as October 17, the world economy would suffer another blow, starting in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“The region is in a very complex situation due to the fiscal crisis and the shutdown,” Colombian financial analyst Juan Alberto Pineda told financial newspaper El Economista América. “The signals that are coming out [of Washington] do not look positive for Latin American exports, or an exchange rate that allows the region to compete in global trade.”

The real ended active trading at BRL1.9642 to the dollar, stronger from the Friday close of BRL1.9698, according to Tullett Prebon via FactSet. Brazilian markets were closed Monday and Tuesday for the annual Carnival festivities.

Traders said there was little pressure from either side of the market Wednesday, with the real drifting to a stronger position on U.S. dollar inflows from foreign investors, mainly in Brazilian stocks, and from overseas bond issues by Brazilian companies.

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Brazil’s real rallied the most in the world as the central bank intervened to stem the currency’s drop and contain inflation in Latin America’s biggest economy.

The real advanced to a six-week high as the central bank sold $1.8 billion of currency swaps at two auctions and agreed to lend as much as $2 billion in foreign-exchange credit lines. Swap rates fell as speculation eased that policy makers will boost the target lending rate, known as the Selic, to cap consumer prices.

The real jumped 1.2 percent to 2.0557 per U.S. dollar at 4:22 p.m. in Sao Paulo, the strongest on a closing basis since Nov. 12. The gain was the biggest among all of the world’s currencies tracked by Bloomberg. The real pared its drop in 2012 to 9 percent after falling on Nov. 30 to a three-year low of 2.1360. Swap rates on the contract due in January 2014 fell three basis points, or 0.03 percentage point, to 7.14 percent.